Bushido (武士道)
by L'eseules
Summary: "Let us dedicate this one to those that have been used and then forgotten. Let us dedicate this one to those whose only purpose in life is to listen and obey and with no say in the matter. Let us dedicate this one to those whose lives have been forfeit from the very beginning and all for the sake of this nation. I thank you, mindless soldier, for all that you've done." OC-SI
1. Preface

**Preface**

The question of why it happened to me was never something to consider. Even if I had never verbally uttered the words, "Karma's a bitch that I keep on a leash," it was present in everything I did. My mere physical presence was asking for the beating that life had in store for me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Looking back at it now, however, I could see where fate took one look at me and laughed—laughed with the fury of a thousand suns, because, simply put, I had asked for it.

You hear stories about people who are reincarnated into cockroaches and other ungodly animals and you think, "Oh, they'd had to have killed thousands, if not millions, of people to be reincarnated as the gunk on the bottom of my shoe." Well, you're wrong.

Fate works in mysterious ways—we know this. What we don't know is fate's understanding of what's right and wrong on the moral spectrum is decidedly obscure. The boundaries of right and wrong overlap, and there is no such thing as _special _circumstances. There's either you did or you didn't, you killed or you were killed, you abused or you were abused, and so on. And we really don't have a way of knowing what our moral compass over the span of our lives looks like in the eyes of fate. We'll never know if our actions have deemed us worthy enough to go above to heaven or below to the fiery pits of hell until the moment to be sorted has come.

In short, we have no way of controlling our fate.

Or do we?

But before I go on, let me make something clear: I am not a bad person.

I'll repeat it. I am not a bad person.

I've done bad things in this past life of mine, and I'll most likely continue to do bad things in whatever life there is after this one, but in my heart I know I am _not_ a bad person.

I've never killed—intentionally.

I've never taken advantage of the poor, unless they've pissed me off.

And I've never, ever raped.

Those are the three worst things any human can do, and those actions are what I'd catalogued as hell-worthy actions.

Fate? Not so much.

I say I'm not a bad person, but if we settled down to look at the nitty-gritty like I was forced to do the moment I died, then yes.

I was a fat, unforgiving, unworthy fuck.

I grew up more privileged than Donald Trump's kids. I lived the life of the limitless and reckless. I took and I took and I took without giving anything back. I'd abused my parents' trust in me more times than I'd had to wipe my own ass by the time I was 13. I'd tried six different drugs by the time I was 15.

I was lazy and crude; I was ignorant and obnoxiously inconsiderate to those of lesser status—be it financially or socially; I did nothing for myself, yet expected everything handed to me on a gold-encrusted silver platter. And it was.

But in my eyes I was not a bad person.

I was wealthy and protected, and I thought my father could take care of most problems for me. I thought myself above the average human being despite being a little more than below, and it's only now that I see how wrong my line of thinking was.

While I was alive nothing, and I mean _nothing_, could've touched me without my say so.

And yet the funny thing about being reincarnated and remembering is that your belief system isn't suddenly re-written as if you've entered a blank state. You retain nearly everything. I remember when I was first reborn, I merely thought I'd hit the "retry" button on some kind of video game, and I'd been dropped in someone else's body. Obviously it was a lot messier than that, but the general gist is there.

It was me, but yet it wasn't.

I didn't remember everything, obviously, and I find it very hard to believe anyone could, but from what I did remember this new home was atrociously different from my previous. Everything about it was different. The atmosphere, the people, the language_,_ the mannerisms.

I might've been a sadistic, teenage fuck in my previous life, but at least I'd been educated, my absent parents made sure of that. I knew which way was up and down, and I knew that when, as a 2 month old, I could recall with startling clarity from the exact moment my new mother's womb contracted, preparing me for a bloody birth, until the moment the medic's cold hands wrapped around my too fat head, I knew—hell, I _knew_ something had gone horribly wrong this time around.

Because everything before those disgusting moments that were my second birth, or rebirth, or whatever it is you want to call it, had been deceptively normal.

I'd died, I'd seen it coming, and I'd accepted it with the kind of calmness that scared me more than the idea of "this is it." It was uncharacteristic of me to accept anything lying down, but at that moment in time the idea of dying had sounded so _good_. I'd been so tired of fighting—for what exactly, I'll never know—and eventually I just gave up.

I gave it all up.

Looking back at things now, I think that's where the biggest gap between my two lives begins. In my old life, I was privileged and I knew it. I was lazy and I knew it. In this new life, what I had yet to learn was everyone, even myself, whom I once thought so invincible it was utterly ridiculous, was more than expendable. I had to work through sweat and pain just to take my next breath. I was but a tool destined to be wielded to my owner's content.

In this new world, babies were born with the sole reason to fulfill another's wishes. We were pawns. If you were lucky enough to be strong, to be surrounded by strong resources, and to grow up strong, then you were more than lucky—you were grateful. But as usual, it was all based on whom you knew. That doesn't change from world to world, from culture to culture, that never changes. Your connections, the values you held closest to you, your mentality—these are all skill sets that aid in your survival. As pawns we learn to value each and every one of the aforementioned aspects in any way we can.

Certain events are set in motion for the sake of the greater good, and as pawns we are the catalysts, unknowingly or not, that uphold the infrastructure of society. Our spilt blood gives power to those that support us as easily as they cut us down. Sacrifices will be made, and no single individual is free. Either you can allow yourself to be swept up in a tide of pity for yourself or you can lead the way and make use of this power.

Sadly for me, I failed to realize this in time.

* * *

_First fanfic. A few things to touch upon, but first thing's first - this will be a very dark story. Like, I'm going all out for this one. As my first legit story on here, I figured I owed it as much. A lot of heavy language. Sometimes it'll be sporadic, sometimes it won't, but I don't want to have to remind people every chapter. This is your only warning. On that same note, the rating will go up...eventually? I think I'll wait a few and then change it. I just dislike how stories rated M aren't featured on the archive page, so I'll hold it off as long as I can._

_This will be a self-insert, and it'll be heavily centered around my OCs or other people's OCs, whom I've asked permission for already, and will feature canon characters when the time comes. That being said, if you're looking for a story where the main character bursts into the scene guns blazing and claims they'll change the future one misplaced orphan at a time this is not the story for you. I repeat: this is **not** the story for you._

_You'll most likely hate the main character, and you'll most likely hate me by the time this is over. _

_xoxox_


	2. Chapter One

.

PART ONE

スタート

* * *

"_Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent."_

_\- Martin Luther King Jr._

* * *

The realization that I was dead hadn't hit me until I was floating, naked as the day I was born, in a room filled with nothing but dark, blank space. The realization came in pieces, however. My first clue was the ache in my lungs, as if the organs had been fed through a shredder with no intention of being glued back together. It hurt to breathe and the longer I stood there, or floated, rather, the pressure on my chest increased. It began dull enough that I hadn't noticed until it was too late. My state of dress was another matter, as was my current position. The realization of both hit me like a freight train. As it should've to any man seemingly dangling by his head in a room with no walls, no floor, no windows, and no color, his balls as brazenly exposed as the rest of him.

My first move had been to cover up, only I couldn't. My hands were frozen by my side. My legs beneath me didn't respond to my urges to kick at the silent air around me, nor did my torso twist as I attempted to dislodge whatever invisible bonds had ensnared me. All I could do at that moment was move my head—though not too suddenly and only in certain directions.

I looked down at my naked chest, the sprinkling of black hair that led to my exposed groin, then my paralyzed feet, and lastly, down into the abyss that from where I stood (floated, waited, _whatever_) looked as if it extended for ages.

"Shit."

The curse was murmured, for the silence in the room was deafening and a part of me was pressed to maintain the eery stillness.

Now, I'd never been one to be afraid of heights. Just last summer my family had taken us to Ecuador to go bungee jumping, and I sure as hell hadn't shied away from that. Or the cute Ecuadorian instructor who'd afterwards offered to further explore the cliffs with me in a few private lessons. But the idea of being so defenseless, so trapped, in a room with no way out jerked my mind and body into anxious movement.

The invisible bonds, as if responding to my frantic plea of release, suddenly let go.

And I fell.

—and landed just as quickly, not two feet below from where I'd been floating.

As soon as the bonds had given away, my descent was quick. My feet touched something cold, a floor made of metal, perhaps, if the way the ringing impact echoed around the room was any indication. I could move every limb finally, but the unexpected release and subsequent landing was jarring, so much so that my knees collapsed under my weight as soon as I'd landed.

"What the hell?!" I spat out.

Naturally, no one responded.

So I made the mistake of looking up, aching to curse whoever—_what_ever—had put me in this place. That's when I saw it.

It was me, but it wasn't. Clearly I was there, naked and disoriented, crouched among the emptiness. I was _there_. I was physically and mentally present in the abyss. But the thing I was looking at, the thing looking back at me with an empty smile, was also me. A replica of myself from the recent pass. Very recent, in fact. It was a copy of myself from before I'd—wait a minute, had I died?

No. There was no way.

I couldn't have, so where the fuck was I?

This was a sick joke.

This was—_oh_. Wait a minute.

Yes.

Yes, now I remembered.

I'd been driving with my friends. Two, no, three of them, not including myself; me—oh, God—me, I'd been driving while drunk, but I always did that. It was a thing we did. It was nothing different from usual. I'd never have imagined it could've gone so horribly wrong. That was a lie. I could've, but I'd been so blinded by my adrenaline—fuck, it'd been such an awful decision, but at the time it'd felt _so_ good. Fuckfuckfuck.

And then the idiot in the passenger seat, who'd been just as fucked up as I was, had grabbed the wheel while I'd been distracted—if I could recall, I'd been taking another swig of the rum—jerked it a little too far to the right in order to avoid a car that'd swung into our lane to pass a vehicle. Our car had swerved into the woods lining the street on our right, and then, nothing.

I assume that's when I'd died.

The copy of myself shimmered suddenly and that's when I realized it was an illusion, a figment of reality meant to terrify me into a straight line. I was wrong. I hadn't died. I'd just passed out, gotten into a massive car crash, slipped into a coma, and this was all a ploy my unconscious mind drew together to teach me a lesson.

I surged upwards, shakily coming to stand on my own two feet, and shouted at the image.

"I get it, okay?! My life's not a joke, the lives of my friends aren't a joke, I get it!?" The hologram, the best explanation I could think of it for now, shimmered again and the robotic, glassy-eyed smile it'd been giving me all this time shifted into a horrifying look. My eyes—his eyes turned dark, the light in them fused out like a flame to be replaced by a chilling grimness; the miniscule bags beneath them increased ten-fold until the skin had darkened enough to match the pitch of his hair. His skin became a deathly pallor, and the areas around his cheekbones and forehead sagged as they clung to the bone structure underneath.

"Wha—" The change was sickening to watch, but I couldn't seem to tear my eyes away. "I said, _stop_. This is my mind, I get it—" Then, as if to conclude the finishing touches on this Walking Dead masterpiece, deep, gouging scars ripped away at the flesh over his face, necks and arms. Any skin not hidden beneath the bloodied and torn clothes that hung on his skeletal frame was ripped to shreds. I could feel the bile rising in my throat.

I managed two steps backwards before my back collided with the unseen barriers that surrounded my position. For as open as the abyss, as I know referred to it, seemed, clearly something, or someone, wanted to keep me in that exact place. They were forcing me to face this monster. They were probably hoping I would see the bigger picture, how this was what'd I'd done to myself and how I had no one else to blame but myself, but I didn't.

I didn't care. It was over and done with and there was no one who was going to hold me accountable because I was dead. I realized this with not a small amount of relief. I figured I could rest for a few good years and then Satan, or whomever would preside over my soul, would catch up with me eventually. But until then I was _safe._

And with that presumptuous realization, everything began to unravel.

The hologram, the abyss' only source of light, fizzled out in a gust of wind, and I was left with nothing but the sudden sensation of heavy stillness that permeated the room. I could see nothing, but I could feel the temperature in the room ricochet—when did it get so hot? And the pressure I mentioned before, the one on my chest, expanded to cover everything, my arms, my legs, the sides of my face, in a rhythmic throbbing.

It came like a reverse wave, starting at my feet and squeezing upwards to the top of my head. It became particularly brutal whenever it crossed my neck, and though never one to complain of any discomforts, not with the sheer quantity of trauma I'd put my body through in my past life, I could feel a sense of claustrophobia rising in my throat. Naturally, I did the only thing I'd taught myself to do when threatened, I lashed out.

I swung at the empty air with the curtain of black hanging over my eyes and probably looked like an idiot doing so. My uncoordinated movements and heavy limbs provided little help in escaping the heat, and the pressure, and the pain.

My first scream came with the burst of light that engulfed me, the abyss fading away as the tunnel of light contracted, whipping the darkness into the far corners of my vision, pushing it further and further with every moment. I couldn't turn my head to see where the darkness was going because the binds had constricted around me once again, and I was suddenly thrust forward into a shock of cold air and landed—_hard._

The plethora of noises hit me all at once: a woman shrieking in pain was the loudest of them all, but underneath her was the beeping of machinery, the turning of a faucet and rushing water, the clank of metal tools, cloth ripping, sheets shuffling, the relieved coos of softer feminine voices, and finally, a congratulatory, if tired, voice booming over my head. I couldn't see anything—which is natural for newborn babies but a fact that hadn't clicked in my mind—so my terror heightened. And then there was a pain near my lower abdomen, along with a resounding snip that I knew would haunt me for years to come, and the realization hit me like a fucking bus.

I couldn't stop screaming. Mind you, I tried, but it seemed as if my emotions from the past few minutes had been bottled up and suppressed, and this force which expelled me from—God, I couldn't even say it—had unleashed those emotions.

I shrieked, and I shrieked, and I shrieked, even as I was bodily passed from person to person, until I passed out.

* * *

Later, I'd come to realize that the woman who'd given birth to me had died shortly thereafter. That, or her role in my life this time around had an even lesser impact than my first mother. Regardless, I never saw that woman again.

But after doing my best to wipe my bloody birth and the subsequent disappearance of my birth-mother from my mind, both their respective rabbit holes of psychological triggers which I had no desire to delve into now, I breezed through my first year easily enough. I didn't do anything seeing as everything had to be done for me. All I had to do was lie there and shit myself, and eat, and rest, and cry (solely when I needed someone to change my diaper, mind you), and shit myself again. I learned a lot during that time.

They were right about what they said of babies in their formative years, their brains absorbed everything. Although I was a fully grown male capable of breaking down my surroundings into objects and people and scenarios, regardless of the language barrier, my brain was a hyperactive sponge; as my body raced to catch up to my mind, the rate at which I took everything in was astonishing.

That's when a small voice in the back of my mind whispers: _Is it though?_ And where the idea of The Chicken or the Egg: Infancy Edition comes in. Was it my 22-year old mind that was aiding in my development and pushing me to learn more about my new environment so quickly, or was it my newly formed toddler brain, eager for a taste of this new world so unlike the previous confines of a womb? Even my limited knowledge of infants warned me against the latter. Something was off.

It began in the hospital room right after I'd been born, just after the doctor had announced in his tired voice something along the lines of, "It's a boy." I'm assuming, clearly, because the foreign language had taken me by surprise. It was simply through deductive reasoning (the stark contrast in robes from the nurses around him and the ones he wore; and the blood that smeared his front and hands; and the parted legs that braced his shoulders, legs I'd just come flying out of) that led me to my conclusion. I passed out soon after of course, but before I did I could hear the pleading, hushed tones of the woman I'd come from; she was desperate for something and by the way the doctor's hands tensed on my body, it was a request he could not comply with.

When I came to, I'd been bathed and wrapped in a baby blue cocoon of warmth and was staring into the solemn dark brown, nearly black, eyes of a man. He held me close to his face, probably for the sake of my undeveloped eyesight, and my first thought had been _too close_. Then, it'd been _where the fuck are his pupils._ Seeing my eyes widen like that, nearly too big to fit on my scrunched baby face, must've tugged at whatever heart was buried within the mountain of a man, for that was one of the few times I'd ever seen my father, my _new _father, smile, genuinely that is.

_Enjoy this helpless baby form while you can fucker_, I hissed internally at him, _I'm going to make your life a living hell for putting me through that. _The cloud over his face lifted for a moment and his eyes crinkled at the corners, tiny crow's feet winking back at me as he smiled.

We moved around a lot after our brief introduction, and since he held my face to his chest, I could only feel as his body moved us from one building to the next. I had no sense of time without being able to see the outside world, but could feel the sting of a morning's breeze on my exposed cheeks. Or it could've been the evening of a cold winter day. I had no clue.

Eventually, we seemed to have reached our home. Other than the muted shuffling of a door sliding open, our arrival was punctuated by silence. Even without being able to look at my surroundings, I could tell no one had come to greet us at the door; my father and I lived alone. This awareness was only solidified within my first days as a newborn where I realized two things: 1) my father was way out of his element, and 2) I had no siblings, probably as a result of number one.

My father, Mountain Man as I fondly called him, I had yet to figure out his real name, was awful at his job. Roughly 20 of the 24 hours in a day, he left me in my nursery. And what a nursery it was. As far as my vision could see, it was barren save for the few scattered baby supplies surrounding my crib. There were no decorations or toys for me to grab onto as I thought most babies needed and sure as hell no books on parenting or diaper changing, my chaffed ass could attest to that.

The nursery reminded me of a man who'd just moved into a new apartment in the City and had yet to unpack. Anything pertaining to children had been crammed into my room and left there—cram was the wrong word for it, though, because it made it seem as if they were things _to_ cram in the first place. There weren't. If I could describe it in one sentence, it was as if the duty of fatherhood had been dumped on the man with no warning. It wasn't until much later that I would come to learn how accurate I was with my interpretation.

So while Mountain Man dealt with all my shit (literally), I thought about everything that had happened thus far.

It took me awhile to get used to the idea of a second birth. By accepting that I'd been shoved out of another woman's cooch, one I never remembered willingly entering, with it came the acceptance of what was to come, of my future as a child _again. _I had so many questions it was ridiculous, and with no one to answer them, I was stuck talking them through in my head. Sometimes aloud. I was an awful baby. But now I understood why humans remembered so little of their former years.

All of it, and I mean all of it, was hell.

I took little comfort in the stiff-handed parenting of my grieving father, or the hurried and often exhausted manner some of the surrogate mothers took care of my needs. I constantly felt like a burden, so I did what I knew best: caused a scene. If something wasn't to my liking—and this was the ingrained spoilt attitude of my past life talking—I let anyone who was nearby know it. But what should've sounded like eloquently worded, sailor-worthy, righteous shouts of indignation came out as panicked, shrieking cries and other incomprehensible baby babbling.

As awful as it sounds, my favorite part of being a newborn involved the fleeting moments I'd been allowed to nurse myself using another woman's breasts. I might've had the body and chemical makeup of a newborn, but in my mind was a brewing 22-year old who'd been cut off at the peak of his life. I'd ogle any and all tits you threw at me.

My second birth-mother hadn't been the only one to give birth at that time, either. Women who'd recently had children and were still lactating were given the duty of feeding any motherless children as well. The place I'd been born in wasn't at all caught up to the science of formula milk. In fact, they were so incredibly medieval, I struggled to think of what Asian country would allow such barbaric living conditions in the current day and age.

Needless to say, my knowledge of third-world Asian countries was limited. Having grown up in a westernized culture, I hadn't a clue on how to familiarize myself with the mannerisms they used, nor the ability to comprehend any language that wasn't English or rudimentary Spanish. This made learning the local dialect a challenge in and of itself. That was the one time I thanked whatever God had placed me in this war-torn country for its lack of resources and wholly undeveloped child-rearing expectations—not that I was a complete failure as a baby.

I'm just saying if there were specific age markers for when babies should've started talking, crawling and then walking in this country, and if I'd failed to meet those markers, this neither hurt nor aided my living conditions, or my life expectancy for that matter. I was simply _there_.

At six months, I'd finally had a decent enough grasp of the language that I could pick out the separate syllables that comprised my father's native tongue. This trick was crucial for deciphering Japanese. And the only way I knew it was Japanese was because of the surrogate mother that'd been assigned to me since my birth. Every time she came by our house to feed me, she entered my room with a softly crooned _Konnichiwa_; the woman was my lord and savior during those trying times.

But I'd gotten used to my father's manner of speaking, as well as the surrogate's. They spoke slowly, making sure to emphasize each word they said and in particular those they wanted me to learn quicker than others.

I was closer to seven months when I'd finally said my first word.

My body had developed enough to the point where I could crawl, kick, and pull myself up onto my feet for a higher vantage point had I the right leverage in my vicinity. I used the newfound strength in my limbs to find out as much as I could of my surroundings. It was during one of those expeditions that my father had caught me trying to lurk around our house on my own.

He'd left my room during one of our bonding sessions to grab something, leaving the sliding door wide open, and I wasted no time in crawling forward, using the thin wooden panel to pull myself up. No sooner had I taken a single wobbly step outwards into the hallway than I was scooped up into burly arms. My father, though pleased I'd managed to make it that far, had felt the need to impress on his child the importance of safety first.

"No!" He'd scolded, and it took all my power not to stick a fat tongue out at him. "Bad Senzo!"

I froze in his arms, my own chubby limbs paused mid-swing.

There was that word he kept saying. He'd said it a few times before, never as pressingly as he'd done just then, but it came up often enough that I struggled to place it among the basic commands and greetings I heard on a daily basis. The hand that'd been on a path for his chest to urge him to let me go changed directions as I placed it open-palmed over his cheek. I gurgled at him in what I hoped was a quizzical manner; I wanted him to say the word again.

My father shifted me in his arms once he realized I wasn't going to squirm away and with his free hand, he dug a finger into his own chest, "Me, _tousan_," his hand turned, the same digit poking my belly once, "you, _Senzo_."

Senzo, huh?

"S...seeen-so," came my curious attempt, and with a shout, I was pridefully tossed high in the air.

Of course my first word would be my own name, I laughed to myself later. Some things never change.


End file.
